


dissipates in reverie

by jubilantly



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, ghost au but noone has actually died?, listen this is not my fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 17:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17854106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: Marius, pontmercying, turns into a ghost without even noticing it.





	dissipates in reverie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ERNest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/gifts).



> So, when I wrote [my BrickClub post for 3.5.5](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/182578644640/) I used the word incorporeal, which made tumblr user lizardrosen think of a ghost!Marius situation, and then I [wrote this thing in response](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/182875952705/) and now I'm putting it here, you're welcome.

Marius Pontmercy had, certainly, other things to worry about, so we must forgive him for taking little notice of the change before it was too late.

It was, furthermore, a very gradual change, and had seemingly no impact on the way he lived his life, because he took no notice in general of his daily tasks; they were ingrained, a comfortable routine, so familiar that he did not think about it. He woke up and he dressed and he breakfasted and he worked a little and he went out to walk and to think and he returned and had dinner, and he went to bed, and that was it.

One day he did not go to bed.

In a reverie, a grandiose and mundane spiraling of thoughts, he sat and then he paced and then he looked unseeing out of the window, and it grew darker and the stars grew brighter, and he stood and he thought and he did not notice what he was doing, and if anyone had been there watching him, they would have noticed him becoming just a little less real.

Marius, for his part, did not notice. He merely went and sat on his bed at some point, and when morning came he got up, like he did every morning, and went about his day.

What had happened to him? Noone could say. At this point, at that very beginning, noone could have said what was happening, and certainly noone would have been able to say why, but something had happened, and because he had not noticed, or despite his not noticing, it continued to happen.

It was small changes, things that were very easy to live with, made his life easier even and his dreamer-isolation more complete – his comb went through his hair like there wasn’t any hair there to go through, and it did so the next day too, and gradually Marius got out of the habit of combing his hair; his stomach did not feel hungry, empty maybe but not hungry, and because he had no money, it seemed rather convenient to him to be able to eat less; his coat was reluctant to be taken off, but then, he did not sleep much, so he didn’t have to go to the trouble really.

Other people were starting to take less notice of him.

For someone like Marius, being as he was, awkward and ashamed, it was freeing, at first, to have people look at him less; girls no longer giggled when he passed, well-dressed strangers no longer sniffed at his old clothing, they all seemed to look right past him, and his wanderings were much more pleasant now that he was, apparently, just another face in the crowd.

(He was barely a face, and people’s eyes glanced off him almost, but he did not know this nor did he care to examine it.)

His wanderings were, too, much more pleasant now that he had got out of the habit of sleeping and could walk at night under the stars and the streetlamps, and think clearly, breathe in ideas with big gulping breaths of fresh night air, without ever tiring or being afraid.

(He did not know why he was not afraid; he didn’t care to examine this, either.)

When he found the Gorbeau house, and moved there, people had stopped noticing him so much that it had become eerie, but he didn’t mind – they still looked at him when he spoke to them, and that was, after all, the only time when they needed to.

(The exception, strangely enough, was his landlady, but this is not her story, and Marius shrugged off the strangeness of it, so we shall not linger on things that do not concern us.)

He lived as he had ever, in the Gorbeau house. He had his room in which he could’ve slept if he did indeed sleep, and in which he could have had his meals if indeed he were still in the habit of doing so, and in which he kept his two spare shirts, which saw no use, because his shirt did not grow dirty anymore.

Neither did his coat, or his trousers, and his hands stayed free of ink splotches; only his boots could still get dirty.

Marius took great care that they would not.

The reason for this, too, had come on gradually; he had always been uncomfortable not looking presentable, but slowly, very slowly, the discomfort of an anxious and proud young man at looking less than his best had gained a twin, a discomfort that was physical, pulled at his stomach oddly, made him feel like something was grabbing him and dragging him away.

This second discomfort grew even as the first became less relevant because Marius was among people less; the second discomfort took over, and spread, no longer just making an appearance when Marius was going to a party, but every time the weather was bad, especially before and after storms, and then every day, every time he left his house.

It was an inconvenience, to say the least; Marius liked his walks rather too much to give them up, especially since all he was doing now was taking walks. But there was that persistent feeling of being thrown off balance, of being pulled apart like taffy, dissolving, twisting all around himself, every time he got mud on his boots, which was often, and he thought he may have to give up his walks, because he didn’t want to know where the feeling would lead, if it grew worse, when it grew worse.

The problem solved itself one day, though not in a way Marius would have expected or wished for: as Marius walked, his feet no longer touched the ground.

They floated an inch above it, just barely, and he stared at them, noticing finally that something was amiss, and remembered all that had changed in the last weeks, months, years maybe, he could not remember exactly, and felt a little queasy.

Insofar as a ghost can feel queasy.

He had not the faintest idea of what to do, and being so young for a ghost, having never, to his knowledge, died, and knowing little to nothing about the supernatural, he was well and truly in over his head.

It was a very, very uncomfortable feeling.

No doubt he would have panicked, but there was a moment, first, of tranquility resulting from knowing something, suddenly, that made things click into place, in which he thought clearly, and he thought: Courfeyrac will know what to do.

That thought was something he could hold onto, and it was something to do.

He went to Courfeyrac’s, feet still not touching the ground, no mud splashing on boots as Marius stomped over puddles, and he made the distance in record time, and he knocked at Courfeyrac’s door and his hand went through and he blinked and he breathed away the panic and he concentrated, knocked again, did not hit the door but did produce a knocking sound, and waited.

Courfeyrac opened almost immediately.

“I appear,” Marius said, with all the dignity he could muster, “to have become a ghost.”

“Oh, heavens,” Courfeyrac said, rolling his eyes, before he took a second look at Marius and startled, and cursed under his breath and opened the door wider and put on a smile, shaky. “Well, come in then, make yourself comfortable, and forgive me for being a terrible host, but I have to go see Combeferre, and Joly, about something very urgent. And– no, I will have to go see Prouvaire about this too, or he will never forgive me.”

Marius nodded and walked soundlessly across the room, the wallpaper faintly visible through him, until he came to a halt next to a chair, and there was the noise of someone sitting on a chair, and Marius stood waiting and looking at Courfeyrac with a vague expectant expression.

“Oh, heavens,” Courfeyrac said again. “Don’t float away while I’m not here, alright?”


End file.
